Elif Safak Quotes

I like to question cultural biases wherever I go, and I question Islamophobia as much as I question anti-western sentiment because I think all extremist ideologies are very similar.

Elif Safak

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• It's extraordinary what children put up with. I happened to see two of my uncles put my father up against the wall of my grandmother's house and knock his teeth out, because he'd been unpleasant to my mother. The next day I went upstairs and found my father making a rather half-hearted attempt to gas himself.

  

  Jack Straw
  • Up
  • Children
  • Mother

• Was music my talent really? No, I don't think I was particularly talented.

  

  Victoria Beckham Spice Girls
  • Music
  • Think
  • Talent

• My mother told me I should be a secretary, but I wanted to be an actress from when I was very young.

  

  Barbra Streisand
  • Mother
  • Me
  • Young

• In terms of people that I know, my grandmother and my mother are huge influences on my writing life because they are both massively supportive and always have been of my career.

  

  Tea Obreht
  • People
  • Life
  • Writing

• I think Obama is right when he talks about the rule of law as a cornerstone of what the United States should stand for. That can encompass our elected officials' adherence to law and our country's return to the Geneva Conventions.

  

  Samantha Power
  • Country
  • Think
  • Law

• I think men, growing up, you have to go through some form of hardship. You've got to harden the metal.

  

  Ice T
  • Up
  • Men
  • Think

• When theology erodes and organization crumbles, when the institutional framework of religion begins to break up, the search for a direct experience which people can feel to be religious facilitates the rise of cults.

  

  Daniel Bell
  • People
  • Up
  • Experience

• The 'We Have Overcome' generation has run out of intellectual creativity but refuses to leave the political stage.

  

  Manning Marable
  • Political
  • Creativity

• I can't imagine playing a boring gig. Like, a boring audience without reaction, I will play against them.

  

  Yann Tiersen
  • Play
  • Boring
  • Reaction

• I don't ever want anything to come in the way of me truthfully telling a story.

  

  Ian Somerhalder
  • Want
  • Way
  • Story

• At every Christmas, I fail to remember the daughters' shoe sizes, and they are not growing, but grown. After ostensible hard thought about who needs what, I have failed to give good gifts; I have failed to receive good gifts.

  

  Padgett Powell
  • Good
  • Remember
  • Growing

• Find a type of exercise that you love - whether it's dance, soccer, softball, anything - just as long as it keeps you active. If you love it, you'll dedicate yourself to it and stay involved.

  

  Francia Raisa
  • Dance
  • Exercise
  • Active

• Parts of the world can be very hostile to differences, social or artistic.

  

  Patrick Wang
  • World
  • Differences
  • Very

• When a marriage culture fails, sexual desire no longer unites; instead it fragments.

  

  Maggie Gallagher
  • Culture
  • Desire
  • Marriage

• If you only believe that you're an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that's quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

  

  Lady Gaga
  • People
  • Believe
  • Single

• While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.

  

  Karl Marx
  • Mad
  • Gone
  • While

• I have a very short attention span.

  

  Frances McDormand
  • Attention
  • Very
  • Short

• I can tell you that Rey is an incredibly brave young woman who starts off alone and encounters Finn, and they go on an amazing adventure, and she makes relationships she never could have imagined, and she sees things she never could have imagined.

  

  Daisy Ridley
  • Alone
  • Amazing
  • Adventure

• Mass incarceration is the result of small, distinct steps, each of whose significance becomes more apparent over time, and only when considered in light of later events.

  

  James Forman, Jr.
  • Time
  • Small
  • Light

• Churchill faced his own diminishing capabilities and increasing irrelevance by maintaining the sense that he was the only one who could solve whatever problem was before him. He was very often wrong, of course, but then he had spent so much of his life overcoming appalling mistakes, disasters, and rejections.

  

  John Lithgow
  • Life
  • Overcoming

• "Spirituality comes from questioning everything but at the same time accepting everything. You can even be spiritual watching TV. When the ad comes on and says, "Don't hate me because I am beautiful," question that."

  

  K. D. Lang
  • Time
  • Beautiful
  • Hate

• This reminds me, Godmother, to ask you a serious question. You are as wise as wise can be (having been brought up by the fairies), and you can tell me this: Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?

  

  Charles Dickens
  • Lost
  • Question
  • Wise

• I like to question cultural biases wherever I go, and I question Islamophobia as much as I question anti-western sentiment because I think all extremist ideologies are very similar.

  

  Elif Safak
  • Question